Facebook shows potential to attract small retailers

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Lead: In recent years, small retailers have been creating home page sales on Facebook, and the social networking site is showing great potential as a platform for electricity, the New York Times online edition wrote this week. Small businesses are more likely to succeed on Facebook than big companies, which may attract more and more small retailers.

The following is the full text of the article:

The rise of F-commerce

Mandy Miller (Mandie Miller), a traffic announcer at North Carolina State Charlotte in the United States, later resigned for the children. She always makes cakes for her friends in her spare time, initially just to find some fun. But friends praise Miller's cake, so she started her own business in April 2009 and opened a cake shop called Got What It cakes.

Miller also built a website to sell cakes, about 5 months after her sister created the got What It Cakes homepage on Facebook. From then on, Miller's business began to grow better. The cake order was increased from 2 to 3 per weekend to 6 to 10. Now, Miller will receive an order for 20 cakes every weekend. By the end of the second year of the venture, Miller's Little Cake Shop had an annual revenue of more than 40,000 dollars.

Got What It Cakes is just a typical case of the new E-commerce trend--f-commerce--. Social media experts say the word f-commerce is a 2009-year term used to describe businesses that sell products through Facebook pages. Payvment, a start-up company that provides technical support for Facebook's shopping deals, says it has collaborated with 170,000 businesses, which are now increasing at 1500 a week, with a majority of fewer than 5 employees.

Show the potential of electric business platform

The rise of the f-commerce is largely accidental, and Facebook has not promoted such activities and has not encouraged users to use them. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on the phenomenon, saying only that "retailers are making a lot of attempts".

Sucharita Mulpuru, retail analyst at Sucharita Mourproux, a market research firm, points out that small businesses are more likely to succeed on Facebook than big companies. According to her, these small businesses are generally less than 100,000 dollars in annual revenues, with fewer than 10 employees. On the other hand, large retailers such as Gap, Nordstrom, J. Penney and GameStop have closed their Facebook stores in the past 12 months. The main reason, Mourproux, is that users are accustomed to the richer shopping experience of the retail stores of large retailers.

But Facebook has raised new challenges for companies of all sizes. Christa Garcia Krista Garcia, a emarketer social-business analyst at the Market Research Institute, said some consumers still felt it was not safe to shop directly from a Facebook store. However, business owners should be aware that Facebook's home page does not belong to all but Facebook, and that if Facebook changes the look and use rules of its homepage, they will face huge risks.

Here are some tips for small business owners to succeed on Facebook:

Create a store

For small business owners, opening a shop on Facebook is a no-brainer, simply by creating a page with a company name, uploading a product photo, and adding a shopping feature. Orangesoda CEO Jay Bien, a network marketing company, said that since the shops on Facebook looked very similar, small business owners should spend some time implementing the difference in design.

Then, small business owners can customize their Facebook homepage by installing apps that allow customers to do shopping, messages, or view menus. At present, Facebook and Third-party vendors have a wide range of applications, and if they feel unsuitable, small business owners can customize their applications. Payvment provides the tools to allow businesses to create a Facebook store with promotions such as shopping carts, discounted information and buy coupons.

Provide personalized service

"Unlike big companies, small businesses can establish good personal relationships with end users," said Wendy Tan-white, Moonfruit CEO of E-commerce Web service provider Windy Tan. Wendy advises small business owners to place distinctive background photos on Facebook's home page, not only to showcase products and services, but also to attract customers ' attention all of a sudden.

For example, on the Facebook page of Got What It cakes, the background photo is a picture of Miller at home, with the baby's picture being taped to the wall behind her and the cake strewn around the living room. Many customers are mothers like Miller, who often communicate with these mothers on Facebook. "We're a local business, I'm both a boss and an employee, but I have 5,000 fans," Miller said. ”

Miller will offer customers advice that may be available only from friends, such as how to deal with the unfinished chocolate cake: "Put some butter in the pan and make some pancakes with it."

Attract the attention of users

To attract the attention of fans and friends, small business owners need to keep updating their Facebook pages, often posting messages such as status updates and photos. Label the person in the photo so that it may appear on the person's Facebook page, which will eventually be visible to his or her friend and friends.

Mother and child supplies company Tutu Cute founder Dean Kump (Deann Kump) held a competition every month to encourage fans to put their photos on tutu Cute's Facebook page. Kump said, "If someone posted a picture of their daughter and the girl was wearing the clothes that I sold, I would label the photos." When a friend sees a picture, he thinks, ' What does TuTu cute do? ' Then you will be logged into my Facebook page. "Qom created the Facebook page of tutu cute last December. TuTu cute half of the product sales come from this homepage.

Tan-White suggested that small business owners should give customers more concessions to let them have their own services. For example, if a customer makes a label on a photograph, he or she can get a certain discount. In addition, Facebook has a feature that allows users to put a post on top of the corporate home page, whether it's on a hot-selling product this week or on a special offer.

Focus on the Community

In April this year, magical Moments modeling, a career modeling provider, rated tutu cute as the "monthly boutique" on its Facebook homepage, so that users of the two home pages could see it. In return, he often advertised the work of her favorite children's photographers, who were also advertised for her.

Patrick Scoff (Patrick skoff) is a painter who sells 90% of his paintings on Facebook. Vescovo said some netizens who visited his Facebook page would initially hesitate to buy their own work, but would dismiss previous concerns after seeing the comments and "praise" of new and sold works.

Vescovo said: "When they see the ' praise ', they think ' I'd better buy it first '." "In July this year, he sold 10 pieces a day, which lasted 10 days and was sold on Facebook," he said.

Baby Grocery Store co-founder Darren Garn (Darren Gann) created its own page on Facebook this February. He said that 35% of Baby grocery store sales were contributed by Facebook, while offering a lot of help and advice to customers. Ramer said: "We have nothing to talk about, from shipments to 9-month-old baby's ideal recipe." ”

Clothing retailer we ' ve labels owner Hither Roglip (Heather Logrippo) created a homepage on Facebook in 2009. She regularly updates Facebook pages. "When I log on to our VE labels homepage, we start interacting with our customers, such as praising you for your scarf," Heather said. ”

Offer more options

Some small business owners only sell their products on Facebook, while others operate stand-alone websites or physical stores, because not all customers are willing to use credit card transactions on Facebook.

Ashley Gall, a jewellery retailer Méli jewelry shopkeeper Ashley Garr, said that for many of her customers, shopping on Facebook was a brand new concept--méli Jewelry's sales on Facebook was only 15%, So she also sells jewellery she designs and manufactures on Etsy, Indie Fashion Marketplace and her own website.

Most of the customers in the

Miller Place orders on Facebook to pay after she sends the cake home or herself. However, Miller continues to operate his own website. "I usually do a lot of wedding cakes, and these cakes are generally paid by the bride's parents, who tend to prefer to buy them on traditional commercial websites," she said. In addition, I have a group of more than 80-year-old and more than 90-Year-old customers who will personally come to the store to taste the cake, rather than through Facebook to buy. "(sailing)